Becoming

An announcement and thoughts on habits and identity-making.

Dear friend,

First—some happy news I’ve been withholding: we’re expecting!

We have been working with a gestational surrogate, who is now 14 weeks along. She and the baby are doing well. At this point, we’re waiting for the 20-week anatomy scan: the mid-pregnancy ultrasound where we’ll get to see more of the fine details. Fingers. Toes. Facial features. Cue squeals here!

As we watch our baby growing at each ultrasound, I have been thinking subconsciously about “becoming.” A grouping of cells becomes a fetus that becomes more and more human as time goes on. It seems to me miraculous in a way that much of life feels mundane to me. But actually, all of it is life. And “becoming” is something we do all the time. It is far from mundane.

The embryo, before it was transferred to the gestational surrogate’s uterus!

Over the last year, I have lost 44 pounds through diet and exercise; I now have about 16 pounds I aim to lose. I gained most of this weight five years ago because I needed a medication that had the unfortunate consequence of causing extreme weight gain.

After a lifetime of being thin, I had grown, over the past five years, into a new identity of being a bigger woman. I looked at this bigger body as a symptom of a body that had betrayed me. I had had a serious illness and the sudden influx of body fat was a daily reminder of that.

But that body—this body—was always beautiful, too. This body got me through a serious illness. This body had been through so much else and lived. This body is damn resilient! And what I thought was a journey to “lose weight” turned into something else: “becoming” a stronger version of myself. Not the “before” self, when I was thin and not strong. And not to get away from being fat either. But to be a version of myself that I had never envisioned before: Sarah, the athlete.

Sarah in dragon boat paddling gear outside of a tent of other disabled athletes.

Over this past year, I became an objectively stronger and healthier version of myself. I put on muscle. My bloodwork showed dramatic decreases in my cholesterol and triglycerides. And my newfound confidence motivated me to join a local dragon boat paddling team for people with disabilities. And by September, I was competing in the Club Crew National Championships in Sarasota, Florida, against other disabled athletes, for a berth in the 2027 World Dragon Boat Racing Championships. What?! Not something I imagined a year ago, or even earlier this year.

There are so many other ways I am becoming. I am becoming a parent, a title I am honored to get to embrace. I am becoming a more seasoned wife and daughter and sibling and friend and coworker. I have continued to slowly become a better middle-grade verse novelist, which one can only do by mindfully engaging in the habit. For instance, I recently realized I had 217 pages of material—and ended at a much stronger, more focused 68. Becoming sometimes means subtracting to find the core.

I have become in the direction I have wanted to by showing up for myself, day after day. There are other ways I need to continue to become, such as in the area of friendship. And, for what it’s worth, my weight loss path has not been linear. Look at this graph:

A graph showing the peaks and valleys of my weight loss journey.

The path, whether it’s to lose weight or become a better friend or improve one’s skills in a particular area, cannot be linear. It’s full of movement and stalls. But through it all, you and I are becoming.

I can’t wait to see how you become.

xo,
Sarah